Joel X Eleanor explores two sides of love on double release “Garden Plot / Something Strange”
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Watch “Garden Plot” music video HERE
Watch “Something Strange” music video HERE
Joel X Eleanor are a London power alternative duo and soulmates destined to bring colour, drama and fun to modern music. Both autistic and intensely detail-driven, the pair approach songwriting with remarkable precision, where every lyric, melody and sound must earn its place.
Eleanor, a Hungarian-born Brit raised in a family steeped in literature and music, brings poetic instincts and a distinctive contralto voice to the project. Joel, on the other hand, spent his childhood in remote Myanmar without electricity, only discovering pop music at age eleven. Together, they form a duo that blends poetic instincts with a rich, expansive sonic world.
It’s a partnership that feels as distinctive as it does collaborative. The pair first gathered a small cult following in London’s underground scene between 2022 and 2025 as the rock band Sweet Anna before stepping forward as Joel X Eleanor, a power alternative project built around their creative dynamic.
Joel handles the writing, instrumentation, production and recording, while Eleanor delivers the vocals and lyrics, shaping the emotional direction of the songs and guiding the overall feel of the music. Together they create a sound that blends heavy guitars, layered synths and bold melodies into something dramatic, thoughtful and unmistakably their own.
Their new double single “Garden Plot / Something Strange” explores the strange emotional territory of love from two very different angles. On “Garden Plot,” a seemingly tender idea slowly reveals something darker beneath the surface.
Written by Eleanor after Joel once asked her for flowers, the lyrics began as a romantic gesture and the idea of planting a garden that would bloom year after year instead of giving cut flowers that eventually die.
But Joel’s brooding production reframes that sweetness into something more obsessive, transforming domestic imagery into symbols of fixation and longing. “Garden Plot” was recorded partly over Christmas at Joel’s grandmother’s house in Birkenhead and at an AirBnB in Derby, where a cute little Christmas tree made out of different-sized aluminium cones was used for percussion.
The track also subtly nods to Eleanor’s Hungarian roots and whispers a fitting line from one of her favorite love poems by Attila József. To roughly translate from Hungarian: "Bite me, bite me - or I'll bite you!" The accompanying video, filmed on the streets of Camden and Walthamstow, brings the song’s unsettling romantic tension to life.
If “Garden Plot” leans into the darker corners of devotion, “Something Strange” offers a more vulnerable counterbalance. The gentler track reflects on the strange, intimate adjustment of sharing your life (and even your bed) with someone for the first time.
Written largely by Joel, it captures that moment of disbelief when solitude suddenly becomes companionship. The song carries a softer atmosphere, guided by Eleanor’s layered vocals and lyrics that explore colour, closeness and the subtle ways two lives begin to merge.
Mixed and mastered by Julie Bartley at Rolling Audio in Newcastle, the two tracks highlight the duo’s distinctive approach to alternative music, pairing dense guitar-driven arrangements with clear, powerful vocals placed firmly at the centre of the sound.
Drawing inspiration from artists such as Radiohead, Muse, The Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers, while also nodding to the rich harmonic colours of London’s modern jazz movement, Joel X Eleanor crafts songs that are heavy yet melodic, dramatic yet intimate. With “Garden Plot / Something Strange,” the duo continue carving out a space where romance, obsession and vulnerability collide.
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